Politics

Craig Gilbert | The Wisconsin Voter

Obama leads among women, younger voters in Wisconsin

President Barack Obama's lead over Mitt Romney in Wisconsin rests heavily on his strength with women, with young people and with unmarried voters, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of seven months of polling this year by Marquette Law School.

Those groups have all leaned Democratic in recent years.

But also helping Obama in Wisconsin is his competitiveness among demographic groups more favorable to Republicans.

For instance, Obama has run essentially even with Romney among white blue-collar voters in Marquette's polling this year, even though he runs well behind Romney with these same voters nationally.

He's running slightly ahead of Romney with whites age 60 and over. And the president is running only a few points behind Romney among white men. That's also much better than Obama is doing nationwide.

In short, Obama's weaknesses nationally are less pronounced in Wisconsin.

"That's his current strength here. And the issue for the campaign is going to be whether Romney can attract these (GOP-friendly) groups and pull those (Obama) percentages down into the 30s," said political scientist Charles Franklin, who conducts the Marquette Law School survey.

If Romney is to overtake Obama in Wisconsin, the GOP challenger will almost certainly need bigger margins among older whites, blue-collar whites and white men - to compensate for Obama's edge among women, younger voters, blacks and Hispanics.

Obama leads Romney by almost 20 points among women and by more than 30 points among unmarried women.

Overall, Obama's level of support in Wisconsin is clearly down from his 14-point blowout victory in 2008, a performance neither campaign expects him to repeat. But he is still doing a few points better in Wisconsin than he is in the very closest battleground states and in the nation as a whole, according to current polling. In recent surveys in Wisconsin, he has enjoyed leads in the mid- to high single digits.

That could change, of course. But the Marquette surveys offer an unusual window into the dividing lines in our battleground state, because of the sheer amount of polling Marquette has done - almost 6,000 interviews with registered voters this year. A sample that large provides a much more reliable measure of smaller slices of the electorate, such as married men, or women under 30, or frequent churchgoers.

The percentages used in this story are for registered voters and are based on all of Marquette's polling for January through July 2012, a period in which Obama's lead hasn't changed all that much. The numbers may modestly overstate Obama's support among November voters, since Democrats tend to do better in polls of registered voters than likely voters. But the focus here is less on the size of Obama's lead than on the social, demographic and political fault lines in the race:

Gender, marital status and age. Obama is doing about seven points better with women than with men in Wisconsin. But that doesn't tell the whole story, because there are big differences by age and marital status among both men and women.

The "marriage gap" is bigger than the gender gap. Obama is doing 14 points better with single women than married women (single in this case includes divorced, separated and widowed voters as well as those who have never been married). He's doing 16 points better with single men than married men.

The age gap also is bigger than the gender gap. Obama is doing 16 points better with women under 30 than with women 60 and older. He is doing nine points better with men under 30 than with men 60 and over.

In effect, age and marital status sometimes trump gender as a predictor of how people vote. Even though Obama does better overall with women than men, he does better with men under 30 than with women 30 and over, and better with single men than married women (see chart).

Looking at gender by age and marital status, the most pro-Obama groups are women under 30 (Obama leads Romney 68% to 28% with these voters) and single women (Obama leads Romney 64% to 30%).

The most pro-Romney group?

Married men, among whom Romney leads Obama 53% to 42%.

Race and ethnicity. Although these are major dividing lines in elections, Wisconsin's small minority population means that in most polls, the numbers of black and Hispanic voters interviewed are too small to provide statistically meaningful samples. But Marquette has polled enough Wisconsinites this year to compare white voters with nonwhite voters (a category that combines black, Hispanic, Asian-American, Native American and other minority voters). The gap is huge. Obama leads Romney by a little over two points among white voters, but by 50 points among nonwhite voters. In 2008, whites made up 89% of the Wisconsin vote.

Party and ideology. These are the biggest dividing lines of all, reflecting how polarized along partisan lines elections have become. Obama leads Romney by 85 points among Democrats but trails him by 80 points among Republicans, The key group here is independents, among whom Obama leads Romney by 10 points in Marquette's 2012 polling of registered voters.

Ideology also is a stark fault line. Obama leads Romney by 85 points among liberal and very liberal voters. He trails Romney by 49 points among conservative and very conservative voters. Obama leads Romney by 32 points among moderates. These numbers might look like they add up to a massive deficit for Romney. But they don't, because conservatives are the single biggest group in Marquette's polling sample, and they far outnumber liberals.

Religious connection. Regular attendance at a house of worship correlates strongly with presidential preference. Romney leads Obama by 15 points among voters who describe themselves as going to church once a week or more. But he trails Obama by 35 points among voters who seldom or never go to church. Among Catholic voters, a very diverse group that often mirrors the voting preferences of the electorate as a whole, Obama has a narrow but statistically insignificant lead.

Unions and public employees. Obama leads Romney by 37 points among union members and 32 points among voters who have a public employee in their household.

Income. Higher-income voters lean Republican, lower-income voters lean Democratic. The pattern here is very clear. Obama leads by more than 20 points among voters whose total family income is under $50,000; he leads Romney by three points among those whose family income is between $50,000 and $100,000; he trails Romney by a single point among those whose family income is between $100,000 and $150,000; and he trails Romney by almost 20 points among those whose family income is $150,000 or more.

Education. Obama has modest leads among voters with a high school degree or less, and among voters who have some college education but not a four-year degree. Romney has a slight lead among voters with a four-year college degree but no postgraduate degree. And Obama dominates among voters with postgraduate degrees, leading Romney by more than 20 points

"Blue-collar whites." One group that draws a lot of attention in presidential contests is white voters without a college degree, often tagged in political shorthand as "blue-collar whites." In recent elections, Democrats have struggled with these voters nationally, who are more Republican-leaning than whites who have a four-year or advanced degree. In a recent Pew national poll, Obama led Romney by 3 points among white college grads, but trailed him by 23 among whites without a four-year or advanced degree.

That pattern is much different in Wisconsin. The gap between white college grads and non-college whites is much smaller. And Obama is doing much better among non-college, "blue-collar" whites than he is nationwide. In Marquette's 2012 polling, Obama and Romney are virtually tied among whites who don't have a bachelor's degree.

The Wisconsin electorate. One way to look at Wisconsin's battleground nature is this: Demographically, the state is favorable to Republicans because it has a small minority population, and a disproportionate numbers of older whites, blue-collar whites and rural whites; but politically, it is somewhat friendly to Democrats because these same demographic groups - older whites, rural whites, blue-collar whites - aren't as Republican-leaning as they are in most other states. They are more in play. By definition, Democrats need to do better with them than they do nationally because they account for such a large share of the vote in Wisconsin, and Democrats don't benefit from the presence of a large minority population.

Four years ago, Obama performed substantially better in Wisconsin with white voters than he did in most other states. He won 51% of white men in Wisconsin compared with 41% nationally. He won 52% of non-college whites compared with 39% nationally. He won 53% of whites 60 and older compared with 41% nationally.

This race is expected to be much closer in the state than it was in 2008. But like 2008, Obama has been polling better with white voters in Wisconsin than he has nationally.

"It's partly the groups you win, but it's also minimizing your losses among the groups you're going to lose," said Franklin. "If Obama performs as well as he's doing in (these polls), losing white men as a whole, but still getting well over 40% of their vote, that's a big win."

In a recent nonpartisan national poll by Pew, Obama trailed Romney by nine points nationally among non-Hispanic whites; yet among these same voters, he has a narrow lead over Romney in Marquette's combined 2012 Wisconsin polling.

In the same Pew national poll, Obama trailed Romney by 19 points among white men, but in Marquette's Wisconsin polling, he trails Romney by only about four points.

In the Pew national poll, Obama trailed Romney by 10 points among "blue-collar" whites, but in Marquette's Wisconsin polling, he and Romney are roughly tied among these voters.

Those numbers will have to change for Romney to flip Wisconsin from blue to red.

For more related data, go to The Wisconsin Voter at jsonline.com/wisconsinvoter